The scene shocked many and highlighted the violence of this year’s olive harvest in the Israeli-occupied West Bank: a masked young man punches an older Palestinian woman picking olives, who then collapses to the ground.
The incident during an attack by Israeli settlers, filmed by an American journalist, occurred in the town of Turmus Ayya, near Ramallah, a hotspot for violence this year.
“Everyone was fleeing because the settlers attacked suddenly, maybe a hundred of them,” said witness Yasser Alkam. AFPadding that a Swedish activist also had his arm and leg broken by settlers.
Alkam, an official in the town of Turmus Ayya, said the woman, Um Saleh Abu Aliya, 55, was beaten while she waited for her son to chase her away from a crowd of settlers.
“The response would only lead to more violence, sometimes with the support of the army,” lamented Nael al-Qouq, a farmer from Turmus Ayya who was unable to reach his olive trees the same day.
Extensive colonies
Not far away, an Israeli flag fluttered in the wind at a settlement outpost, illegal even under Israeli law.
The army finally arrived in Turmus Ayya and dispersed the crowd using tear gas and tear gas. AFP The journalist witnessed it.
But not before the young people who descended on the village burned at least two cars.
Israeli West Bank police chief Moshe Pinchi asked his district commanders to find the man who attacked Abu Aliya, according to a leaked WhatsApp message reported by Israeli media.
The Israeli army said AFP that it “works in coordination with the Israeli police to enforce the law regarding Israelis involved in such incidents.”
But Turmus Ayya is far from being an isolated case, and AFP journalists witnessed at least six different cases of Palestinians being denied access to their land, attacked by settlers, or subjected to vandalism during the 2025 olive harvest.
Clashes in rural areas have reached new heights this year, driven by the steady expansion of Israeli settlements and a growing number of settlers – not all of whom engage in violence against Palestinians.
More than 500,000 Israelis live in settlements in the West Bank, occupied by Israel since 1967.
All settlements in the West Bank are illegal under international law.
“Uprooted”
Near Turmus Ayya, in the village of Al-Mughayyir, a villager was unable to harvest.
“I have ten dunams (one hectare) of olives. All I have left are the olive trees from the garden at home… They uprooted everything,” said Abdul Latif Abu Aliya, 55. AFP.
Abu Aliya’s land borders a road on the other side of which three caravans constitute a recently established settlement outpost.
After a settler was injured in an altercation near Abu Aliya’s house, an army order demanded that the trees planted by his father and grandfather be uprooted.
Bulldozers then pushed mounds of earth and roots halfway up the field and 100 meters from the family home, creating a barrier that Abu Aliya and his family do not cross for fear of being attacked by settlers.
Facing unprecedented violence during this year’s olive season, the Palestinian Authority’s agriculture minister called on the international community to protect farmers and pickers.
“This is the worst season in the last 60 years,” Agriculture Minister Rizq Salimia told reporters, adding that this year’s harvest was already poor due to the bad climate.
Ajith Sunghay, head of the UN Human Rights Office in the Palestinian Territories, condemned the “serious attacks” during this year’s harvests and deplored the “dangerous levels of impunity” for their perpetrators.
The annual harvest, once a peaceful gathering for families in the occupied West Bank, has in recent years turned into a series of increasingly violent clashes involving Israeli settlers, troops, Palestinian harvesters and foreign activists.
Identity marker
The season began in October and will last until mid-November, as Palestinians in the West Bank harvest olives from trees they consider deeply linked to their national identity.
The West Bank has more than eight million olive trees for three million Palestinians, according to the Agriculture Ministry’s 2021 census.
Every fall, Palestinian farmers, but also city dwellers whose families own a few trees, go to the fields to pick olives, most of the time by hand.
The UN humanitarian agency OCHA said 27 West Bank villages were hit by harvest-related attacks in the week of October 7-13 alone.
“Incidents included attacks on harvesters, theft of crops and harvesting equipment, as well as acts of vandalism against olive trees, resulting in casualties and property damage, or both,” OCHA said.
